New Chechen War Is Still Avoidable, Leader Claims

Russia's Drive Against Guerrillas In Chechnya Risks A Rerun Of The '94-96 Conflict, But Caucasus Peacekeepers Could Bring Calm, Declares Aslan Maskhadov.

October 21, 1999|By Colin McMahon, Tribune Foreign Correspondent.

GROZNY, Russia — As Russian troops advance toward this Chechen capital, President Aslan Maskhadov appears as bewildered as he is besieged.

"I don't know what they need to show them that this is an enormous mistake," Maskhadov said of the Russian politicians and generals pursuing their second war in his breakaway republic. "It will be worse this time. There will be more victims. There will be stronger resistance. We will be fighting everywhere, in every village and city, in the woods and in the mountains."

The Chechen president, a disarming gray-haired former colonel in the Soviet army, said there is still a peaceful way out. He said in an interview with reporters at his heavily guarded presidential compound that it's not too late to avoid a repeat of the 1994-96 Chechen war that killed tens of thousand of civilians and Russian troops.

Maskhadov envisions a Caucasus-wide security and peacekeeping force that would draw on police and soldiers from the various Russian republics in the region, as well as from Georgia and Azerbaijan. These forces would patrol borders, investigate reports of terrorist activity and pursue criminal suspects for prosecution.

The Russian military would not be involved, Maskhadov said. As Russian tanks and artillery crept closer to Grozny, Maskhadov was firm: The Caucasus would not find peace as long as Russian troops and tanks remained there.

But Moscow, which once saw Maskhadov as a relative moderate and Russia's best hope for normal relations with Chechnya, now ignores him. There is no sign of a letup in the campaign to rout Islamic guerrillas from their bases in Chechnya.

On Wednesday, Russian forces consolidated their positions, some as close as 10 miles north and west of the capital, and kept up bombing raids, claiming to have killed about 50 rebel troops. A confident Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, whose popularity has soared since the latest campaign began, visited a military base in a neighboring province to meet the Russian pilots carrying out the airstrikes over Chechnya.

Maskhadov's term in office has taken a different trajectory from Putin's. Since being elected in January 1997 with a clear mandate from a war-weary populace, Maskhadov has seen his power and popularity drop sharply as many Chechens, even those who like him, increasingly regard him as impotent.

This has dire implications for more than just Maskhadov's political future.

It's possible, though considered remote, that the Russian military can defy expectations and subdue a people who chased them from Chechnya three years ago. Failing that, Moscow eventually will need to reach a new agreement with the Chechen leadership.

No politicians or military leaders in Grozny seem prepared to drop Chechnya's claim of independence, which Moscow rejects. Few seem as willing to negotiate with Russia as Maskhadov has been.

If Maskhadov winds up crippled politically, radicalized against Russia or even dead, negotiations between Moscow and Grozny could prove even more difficult than they already promise to be.

"The main complaint addressed to me is that I talk with the Russians too much," said Maskhadov, whose open offer to negotiate with President Boris Yeltsin an immediate end to the recent fighting has been rejected by the Kremlin.

"After each meeting or each signing of a document or agreement, during the previous war and afterward, I put myself in an awkward position with my people when the Russians ignore the agreement."

That Maskhadov has survived in power so long is an achievement in itself.

Chechnya is a cauldron of tribal, economic and political rivalries. The Chechens unite with fierce devotion against outside aggression, but they are often clannish and suspicious among themselves.

Maskhadov rode to a 65 percent victory in the 1997 presidential race as the Chechens' best hope of keeping the peace at home.

"When the Russian soldiers left (in 1996), they expected us to turn on one another, so that they could come back in and finish us off," said Sultan Bolgayev, a 37-year-old engineer who lives off small farming and odd jobs in the village of Elistanzhi. "But we did not. Maskhadov gets credit for that."

Bolgayev and others acknowledge, though, that Maskhadov has failed to gain control over the various private armies and criminal groups in Chechnya.

The Chechen field commander Shamil Basayev and his ally, the Arab fighter Khattab, angered many Chechens by fighting alongside separatist Islamic militants in neighboring Dagestan. This, some Chechens say, only provoked Russia to launch its latest offensive on Chechnya.

Moscow also blames Chechen warlords for a wave of terrorist bombings that killed nearly 300 people in Moscow and elsewhere. From Maskhadov on down, the Chechens deny the charges.

Had Maskhadov been more effective, his critics say, he could have reined in Basayev, Khattab and the others.

"The reality is that Maskhadov is not powerful enough to challenge Basayev," Bolgayev said. "He cannot risk a civil war."